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Monday, 3 August 2009

Mop As Metaphor?

So I was mopping my house today, and thinking "gee, this may be the last time I use this particular mop" and so on. The mop in particular is an old-fangled string one, the best kind of mop. When those mops are new they are so-so. Not terribly moppy or absorbent and too sproingy and pouffy to wring out properly. It takes them a few weeks to lose their newness and become just right: stringy, squeezy and friendly to dirt. A boon to teak floors everywhere. A broken-in mop understands how to be a mike stand or dance partner in the mopping adventures of life.

Are you with me here? Good.

But then. After a while, a string mop begins to fall apart. It looks depressed and bits fall off. The strings thin. But you hang on, week after week, because once you buy a new mop you have to break it in all over again! So there you are, thinking "goodbye, old mop" and singing "Oooooh Danny Booooy", three-stepping through the dry patches and picking up bits of string as you go. Dragging out those last moments, because parting is such sweet sorrow. And thinking, "There must be a metaphor in this, somewhere".

13 comments:

Anonymous
said...

...and then a bit of that tired ole mop gets caught on something, a relic from another era, perhaps a morris chair, and no matter how much you twist and bend it that ole mop stays stuck until you lift that memory up on high and set it down again. And though the ole mop continues on its way once again, you know sooner or later it will happen again...maybe with that newer mop that you'll be breaking in...

Krissa, you should try living next to a bloody jungle. THE DUST! THE LEAVES! THE SCORPIONS AND TARANTULAS! Oh yes, I sweep, every day or so. Mopping not so much.Vicki, the rocking Morris chair is the worst culprit, but I can usually slide it out onto the deck. How come olde furniture is so HEAVY?

Why yes. We all are a hodgepodge of centuries of human DNA aren't we? So why should anything else be different. It's called evolution. And evolution doesn't stop...because the world hasn't stopped changing.Now, imagine that micro universe on your Morris rocker and allllll that DNA combining and seeping into the tiny fissures of wood between the varnish and when conditions are right...BOOM!! A new organism is born!

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